Telling Stories: Secrets Don't Keep

A lot of my so-called 'advice' for Storytellers comes down to treating your players like collaborators. You're all working together to write a story and while your job is world-building, supporting cast and antagonists, their job of being the stars of the story is just as important.

Quite recently, something came up in the Lost City of Atlanta game that gave me quite a fit, and it was all my fault. I learned from it and I wanted to share the experience in case it helps anyone else, player or ST. Let me give some background first, so the situation makes sense for those who are not familiar with my game world and cast.

Johnny is the Drama Mama of Lost Atlanta. Literally true: he's given birth to the most children of anyone in the cast despite being male most of the time. Everything crazy and shitty happens to him and mostly, it's all his fault. He dives in without thinking and gets himself into terrible situations. He always had a rocky relationship with his father, Lugh, and their mutual distaste escalated into dislike and then outright hatred. Johnny eventually was speared through the chest by his father and left for dead, but saved by his pet dog going to fetch a healer. He then embarked on a huge quest to break all his links to Lugh and succeeded. Despite that, his Irishness forms a core of his identity and he sacrificed a great deal of time, effort, comfort and sanity to remain one of the Tuatha de and be accepted among them.

He turned down one offer from Cernunnos to jump ship and become a Nemetondevos and the Horned God's adopted son because he didn't want to give up his heritage and position as a Bard. Various things happened and events transpired. Cernunnos became Johnny's foster father and the only positive paternal influence in Johnny's life. When Cernunnos died, he left behind instructions for two of his biological sons to succeed him, one as the Fist of Cernunnos and another as the Wisdom of Cernunnos. Johnny is closely tied to both those sons: one is his beloved foster-brother and Johnny has been Guiding him for years. The other is actually Johnny's biological son, since Cernunnos is like that.

This is where things get tricky. Cernunnos didn't want either of his sons being the new Chief of the Gaulish Gods. Aside from neither of them being particularly suited for them, he had his own reasons (some of which Johnny's player suspects and others he does not) for wanting an outside party involved. So he appeared to Johnny in a vision and asked him to become the Tongue of Cernunnos, the figurehead of the trio of his sons who could take the place of Chief.

None of this was discussed with Johnny's player in advance. When Cernunnos asked Johnny to give up everything he'd fought his entire life to earn and leave his heritage, his family and his Pantheon behind to become the figurehead-chief of the Nemetondevos, I think it actually gave Johnny's player a mild case of heart failure.

He was caught. On the one hand, Johnny was incredibly devoted to the Irish Gods (as an idea if not specifically devoted to all of them personally) and centered a huge amount of his identity on being the Bard of the Tuatha de Danann. He would have to give that up, and also lose his PSP of Enech which not only did Johnny love to use, but Johnny's player had put quite a bit of work into re-writing and was enjoying.

On the other hand, Cernunnos was a supportive, caring and powerful father figure who Johnny loved dearly. He had been abandoned or scorned by two other fathers and having Cernunnos care for him and accept him into his family as a foster-son helped Johnny through some of the hardest emotional challenges he'd faced. Johnny repeatedly had demonstrated that he'd do anything to gain the approval and love of Cernunnos. Turning down the last wishes of his foster father, which included a rebirth ceremony that would make Johnny the biological and divine son of the Horned God, was beyond him. It would be everything he wanted... at the cost of everything else he wanted.

I sprang all this on Johnny's player without consulting him and that was a mistake. Sure, the surprise was just as much of a surprise to the player as to the character but in this case, that was not good. This was a decision that, either way it went, would be a huge alteration in Johnny's personality. It would define him in many significant ways. Johnny's player was alright with it after some time to think, but if I had discussed the idea with him before springing it, I don't think he would have gone with it.

Without consulting the player, I went with this incredibly harsh storyline which made Johnny examine some of the deepest parts of his character and do a lot of soul-searching. That is great, good stories should do that. The problem is that it very easily could have been a choice that, either way, would have changed Johnny in a way that would make him less fun to play. After it happened, there was serious discussion of retconning the discussion away or changing it because Johnny's player loved being Irish. He's a huge fan of Irish culture, history, mythology and folklore. Asking him to change Pantheons is a huge sacrifice. He eventually came down on the side of going with the Nemetondevos, but it wasn't easy for him. He was considerably mollified that the Irish will still talk to him and he can maintain his Irish persona and cult through the magic of Divine Aspects (we'll talk about that in another post).

After this experience, the next time a huge character changing idea came up, I discussed it with the player in advance. Alan, our resident Aztec, has undergone a few big changes. Even before the incident with Johnny, I talked them out with him because Aztec mythology is not my forte and Alan's player (Griffinguy) has a friggin degree in Mesoamerican archaeology. He often has ideas that fit the Pantheon perfectly, ones that I'd never come up with.

For a while now, he's been planning to have Alan become the Green Tezcatlipoca (complicated by the lack of a linguistic distinction between blue and green in the Aztec language) and I struck upon the idea of Tezcatlipoca (the Black one) deciding to arrange it so that Alan would increasingly find himself being put in situations where he was opposed by his father, Quetzalcoatl, until eventually Alan would see the wisdom in murdering Quetzalcoatl and replacing him. This would rid Tezcatlipoca of his oldest rival without any of the trouble of his place in the cosmos going unattended and the extra bonus of the new Tezcatlipoca being amenable to 'guidance' by the Smoking Mirror himself.

I discussed this idea with Alan's player and he liked it. He has some changes he suggested and the resulting storyline, a collaboration between him and me, is going to be much richer and more interesting than the idea I had by myself. Plus, it won't end up making changes in Alan that his player would be unhappy with.

Here's the TDLR section, so if you've been skimming it's time to pay attention again. The key is remembering a distinction between the character and the player. As the Storyteller, you should challenge the characters, provoke deep and even heart-wrenching choices they have to make. You can even torment them a bit if it makes for a good story. All of that, though, is to make sure the story is interesting and playing that character is fun for the player. If you're contemplating a storyline that will cause stress or changes that might make the game less fun for the player, you owe it to them to discuss the idea with them first.

The players aren't your enemies as the Storyteller and they can help you come up with stories that really get inside their character's heads. After all, they know their characters better than you do. They're the ones writing their characters, developing their histories and personalities. Sometimes it can be fun to be taken by surprise, but for the really, really big stuff, give the players a heads up and let them have some input.